| Eagora

During the middle ages, as it is today, it was impossible to create an institution without ensuring it had the means of sustenance, or at least, without providing a financing structure able to suppress that given institution its needs. For that reason, since the moment of the foundation of the first Portuguese university, itinerant between two cities (Lisbon and Coimbra), and throughout the entire middle ages, the Crown was constantly preoccupied with financing the institution, so that it could 1) pay its officials and professors, 2) have rooms where the educational activities could take place, and 3) ensure that the university had material working conditions. We propose to analyse only the first kind of expenditure, that was secured through a system that included internal (collectae and tuition fees) and external (church rents) revenew, and to identify the structures on which the Portuguese King sought to maintain the working staff of the Portuguese Studium Generale. Therefore, this study, aims to analyse the Portuguese medieval university on a strictly economic perspective, examining methodically and in detail the salaries obtained by the members of the Portuguese Studium generale between its foundation, in 1290, and its definitive transference to Coimbra in the year 1537, whether they were professors or officials with other responsibilities, such as “scrivener” or “rent collector assistant”. This analysis results from a larger project, called Oeconomia Studii, which aims to study the funding, management and resources of the Portuguese university during the medieval and early modern period, a time of great interest in the context of the current economic and scientific stance in Europe.